Christine had to get born again in the Houston traffic.
That’s a sanctification freeway.
She was vacillating between 2 messages.
A or B? Congregation chose B.
A was in her notes, B in her brains.

We don’t have time on the planet to play games.
Some have been serving Jesus a long time.
We need to get this; get to a place of being rather than doing.
We reproduce what we are; not what we pretend to be.
It's not all about doing whatever you want to do.

Do we want 613 Mosaic laws or 2 verses?
Women chose the 2 verses.
What’s the greatest commandment in the law?

Matthew 22:36-40 New International Version (NIV)“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The whole law can be summed up here.
Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.
And you can’t separate loving people from loving God.
Christine got a trainer so she would look fit in front of all the people at an upcoming conference after having a baby .
She had 8 weeks to get ready for the conference.
She was ready to start training but the trainer said no.
She had a C-section.
Lady said “Your core is weak”.
All you do stems from your core; if you start activity prematurely your body will eventually collapse.
Gave her a yoga mat and exercises.
Sitting there she felt Holy Spirit speak.
You have a spiritual core.
Body is weak on the earth because the core is weak.
We’re trying to do things from the outside in instead of from the inside out.
God doesn’t want us to act like Christians He wants us to be Christians.
Not pretending to be Christians.
Our core is love God with all your heart, soul, & mind.
And love your neighbor the same way you love yourself.My body does love its neighbor as self, but they don’t love themselves.
We love God with our broken hearts, wounded souls, and tormented minds.
—And you see God that way.
And that’s how you end up loving other people.
So we put on an act because we don't know what else to do.

When you go to the gym the last thing you want to do is work your core.
Push-ups work the core.

Why did Jesus start with our heart?
Passion.
It’s not a boring obligation – you do it because it stems from your heart.
Remember the Passion of the Christ?
It was overwhelming.
Jim Caveziel was in the restaurant.
She shouted “There’s Jesus!” to her husband’s embarrassment.
The guy they were with knew him and introduced them.
Heart pounding “I’m going to meet Jesus”.
They were the same height when he was seated and she was standing.
His eyes were as amazing as in the movie.
He said there aren’t many believers in Australia are there?
She said there are none.
He started witnessing to her.
He was so passionate she didn’t have the heart to tell him she was a Christian.

Christine's husband fell in love with her when she was teaching bible class.
She didn’t notice him
He found out that she swam every morning.
So he showed up in the pool and swam at the same time.
They’ve been married 19 years.
Never once has he got up at 6 am to swim.
You do what you want from passion.
Nobody makes you get up to read your bible.
Nobody makes you act like a Christian because it stems from your heart.
It’s not a boring religious obligation.
Some of us have lost our passion.
Our hearts aren’t in it anymore.
Sports metaphor – heart’s not in the game.
You know if your heart’s in it on Sunday morning.
At 49 she’s more passionate than the day she met Christ.
This thing is not meant to run out.
They that wait upon the Lord…
Caleb said I’m not on any retirement program.
Give me my mountain.10 “Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old!11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.12 Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”Joshua 14:10-12

I didn’t come here to get cynical about the church, life, etc.
Somewhere along the line bitterness crept in.
Toxic waste of bitterness, offense, jealousy...
You’ll have a spiritual heart attack; your arteries are clogged.
God must do spiritual surgery because He’s not flowing thru you.
You wouldn’t have to try to be a Christian – you would just be one.
It’s less exhausting when you stop acting.
This was never meant to be that difficult.
If this was not of God Christine wouldn’t be able to do it for 20 years.
She doesn’t feel old, or clogged, or tired.
She goes to the Word not out of obligation but passion.
God doesn’t need her to read Him the bible in the morning.
I need to read it for me – not for God.
We turn what is supposed to be a love adventure into a boring obligation.
God must go deep and discover the anger, bitterness, shame, guilt…
That stuff is stopping God from flowing inside you.
It’s going to clog everything up.
Some have been on the borderline of a spiritual heart attack for a long time.
They’re putting the paddles on you every Sunday to bring you back to life.
Just to exist...
—Because we won’t deal with our own hearts.
The world sees that we’re just as lost as everybody else.
Jesus says Will you give that stuff to Me?
He starts with our heart and moves on to our soul.
Many Christians miss it here.
Try to make it a behavior modification program.If I could just act right.
It’ll take all the stress out of your Christianity.
Many of us forget that we’re a spirit person who has a soul and lives in a body.
If you went to the altar for salvation you would still have the same cellulite on your thighs.
It will be buried with you until you get on the treadmill and stop eating Krispy Kremes.
We don’t think that because we pray the sinner’s prayer our body is instantly transformed.
So what makes us think if our soul was damaged and wounded before we prayed the sinner’s prayer we’d be instantly healed afterwards?
We have sincere hearts but we’re constantly up and down.
We want to stay diligent in our spiritual disciplines.
We’re OK for small periods of time but then that evil twin shows up.
We come to the prayer meeting and are praying.
Thinking if I just pray more, fast more, read the bible more, serve more—
That’s why most people give up.
It’s not a spiritual issue; it’s a soul issue.
When Christine was saved she had the gifts and talent but she had a profoundly wounded soul.
She lived in very poor district.
So marginalized because of her ethnicity.
It was hard to be Greek in Australia.
She was regularly sexually abused by different men.
She had so many defense mechanisms.
When you don’t know how to let the Holy Spirit protect you, you protect yourself.
You build walls.
2 weeks before her 33rd birthday her 35 yr old brother said he got letter that he was adopted.
She freaked out.
Her father died when she was 19.
Greeks are extremely volatile.
She thought her brother might snap.
She went to her mother’s house as her brother arrived.
Her mother cried and said it’s true.
She went to kitchen to make food.
Mother asks do you want the whole truth?
Christine was adopted too.
Speechless.
Am I still Greek?
She said Before I was formed in my mother’s womb He knew me.
That every fact that she thought she knew to be true changed that day.
To this day she doesn’t know about her origin.
But there’s a higher truth – the word of God.
We are His workmanship, recreated for good works.
The abuse, the abandonment, the rejection –
Christine’s soul was wounded.
A year after finding out she was adopted the government sent her documents.
Don’t play the game and miss your whole life.
Let God go deep.
At 33 she was a teacher of the Word.
She had the word in her so that’s why it came out of her.
When we don’t understand our own woundedness we keep doing the same old thing and blaming everybody else.
We’ve locked Jesus out of the dark places in our heart.
We prefer to play the game.John 1:14 The MessageThe Word became flesh and blood,and moved into the neighborhood.We saw the glory with our own eyes,the one-of-a-kind glory,like Father, like Son,Generous inside and out,true from start to finish.
Moved into the neighborhood.
We just want to visit with Him on Sunday and/or Wednesday.
When visitors come you clean up your home.
You get the good food and stuff out for visitors.
Kids can’t misbehave with visitors around.
War breaks out as soon as the visitors leave.
We come to church and the spirit of hypocrisy comes upon us.
Greeter asks "How are you?" I’m blessed.
We can be worshipping Jesus and deciding on our sex life at the same time (he’s not getting any this month).
After service telling family members the message was for them.
Then you resent yourself because you don’t want to be like that.
It’s an ongoing process.
You’re never so healed that you don’t need Jesus.
I’m seated at the right hand but I’m being seated at the right hand.
I’ve got to replace the lie with the truth.
Some of us haven’t even recognized the lies we believed.
There’s not one thing Jesus can’t heal but you’ve got to be prepared to go thru the process with Him.
We don’t want to know the truth; that’s why we’re bound.
You’ve got to know a truth in order to be set free.
Christine couldn’t have responded to the adoption news well if she hadn’t spent a decade studying the word.
Her birth certificate says name: Unnamed
See Christine your mother didn’t want you; she didn’t even give you a name.
She had a number, dehumanizing.
It’s easy to ignore pain and suffering when someone is just a number.
We get so desensitized to so many people.
Her social report said that mother didn’t seem too involved with the child. Just wanted to get it over with.
Unnamed. Unwanted.
In 1993 she was running the largest youth center in America.
Faith based center.
Students from very elite Social Work program wanted to work there.
But university didn’t like that it was faith-based.
They wanted the results without the faith (nonsense).
Her degrees in Economic History and English didn’t qualify her to teach Social Workers.
She has started anti-trafficking programs in different countries.
The experts said she was unqualified.

This is what most of us determine our value by.
What the government said.
What the teacher said.
Christine isn’t denying the black and white on the paper.
Unnamed. Unwanted. Unqualified.
But she found another black and white ink on paper. [The Bible]
And it takes as much faith to believe it as the other.
Too many of us allow the facts to determine our destiny rather than the truth.Psalm 139 says she was wanted.
She was qualified (Whom He calls he qualifies).
There are no limits if you would allow God to go deep.
The devil is a liar.
But our wounded soul gives him so much room to move.
Heart surgery.
Soul surgery.
Why your mind?
It’s your mind muscle that will take you to your destiny.
It’s all won or lost in your mind.
People think Christine’s just obsessed with the word.
She needs it to survive.
She’s always only one thought away from destruction.
We’re like trains headed somewhere.
You’ve got to reprogram your mind.
The renewal of your mind.
It’s the renewing of our mind that will take us to our destiny.
Don’t jump on the first train of thought that comes along.
Christine aggressively arrests her thinking.
If she doesn’t it’s amazing where her mind will take her.
And where the mind goes the body will follow.
That’s how you end up in bed with the wrong person.
At the university in Sydney, she used to catch a train.
Everyday, 5 days a week, she went to the place and the train would be there at 7:30 am.
One day she was running a little late.
She didn’t check the register.
She jumped on the train that came.
But this wasn’t the express train.
It headed for the mountains and didn’t stop for an hour.
Christine was so frustrated.
She goes to the station master and demands “How did I get here?”
You got on the wrong train didn’t you?
Every day we ask how did I get to this depression, anxiety, etc.?
Because I got on the wrong train of thought.
Decide “No I will not take that train of thought.
I choose kindness, love, peace, patience,…”
But you’ve got to learn to reprogram.
Hours of replacing the lie with the truth.
If you abide in my word you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
This is life or death.
She’s the kid left unwanted and unnamed; abused for years.
She couldn’t think two straight thoughts.
Her heart was so full of anger and unforgiveness and bitterness.
She got saved but brought all the toxic waste with her.
Some of you come to Him and sincerely love Him.
But it’s been years – are you going to go into 2015 playing the game again?
When she got the cancer diagnosis last year she had to do it again.
Get in the word and do what it says.
You have to apply it everyday.
It’s an ongoing journey.
She couldn’t do one push up but then she could do 1, 2, etc.
Some of you collapse because you haven’t built up your spiritual core.
You haven’t allowed the HS to go in and do a true healing and deliverance.
Giving God the key to every place in our heart.
We need to allow God to come in and do open heart surgery.
Otherwise one of those arteries is going to blow.
Some of you are on this yo-yo.
Immorality, stay away from church from guilt.
Keep promising God you will do better.
You don’t have the power to do better – God does.
Jesus says let me strengthen your heart so you develop a strong sense of self-worth.
Then you’ll love your neighbor and be a witness.

Jesus wants to take the pressure off you.Let me do it in you.
You must first surrender your heart and mind to Christ.
Some have only truly known religion – not relationship with Jesus.
The key to being free is to decide to step over the line from religion to relationship.
Maybe you know obligation.
He is faithful to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.

[Altar Call]

Christine is such a believer in prayer.
[She prayed for everyone]
Jesus I’m willing to say YES to the process.
Open heart surgery. Soul. Mind.